Postmodern Marx

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Mon Jun 7 09:45:56 PDT 1999



> On Fri, 4 Jun 1999 01:51:13 -0400 curtiss_leung at ibi.com writes:
> > "Dark satanic mills" was Blake...I don't have a clue as to
> >Blake's
> > politics.
> >
> Politically, Blake was a radical. He was part of a circle of friends
> that included Thomas Paine. During the 1790s they were noted
> for their sympathy to the French Revolution and were subject
> to persecution from Pitt's government because of it (Paine had
> to eventually flee from Britain to avoid imprisonment).
>
> Jim Farmelant

Blake was also influenced by William Godwin's _Political Justice_ and was one of English Romantics who could accept neither Christianity nor British utilitarianism...finding industrialism and its values of acquisitiveness and competition repugnant, he looked to fantasy and transcendence for clues to protect self from alienation & exploitation. ..a pastoral utopian, he lived a pretty solitary life with the exception of the period that Jim F refers to above when his circle of friends - including Godwin, Paine, Richard Price, Joseph Priestly, Mary Wollstonecraft - had a relationship with the London Corresponding Society that promulgated radical ideas influenced by the Jacobins...

Michael Hoover (who is, admittedly, a bit out his range on this matter and welcomes comments/corrections/criticism)



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list